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The history of the
fore-and-aft rig is a fascinating one. It is particularly interesting
when you realize that two of the earliest fore-and-aft rigs, the lateen
sail of the Middle East (Egyptian feluccas and Arabian dhows) and the
Chinese junk, have remained largely unchanged over the centuries and are
still in use in the areas where they began.
Conversely, in the West,
the fore-and-aft rig has been under constant development: from the
dipping-lug rig based on the old square sails to standing lugs, gaff
rigs, and finally to "leg o'mutton" sails, spritsails, and the modern
Bermudan rig. And, of course, the rig is still being developed with
newer materials, fully battened sails, mechanical vangs, in-mast
reefing, sprit rigs with wishbone booms, and so forth.
Readers will note that I
use the term "Bermudan" rather than "Marconi." The reason is that the
rig first became more widely known in the late 1600s after reports
reached Europe of the good performance of the small sloops of Bermuda.
So I prefer to use the island name, rather than call it after a radio
mast that was not invented until 200 years after a Bermudan rig first
caught the breeze.
Sandingo, a 42-foot sloop |
21-foot catboat |
Gaff vs. Bermudan
The gaff rig and the Bermudan are the two major rigs today. Each has its
advantages, but truly they operate on different planes. The racing
sailor and the average yachtsman stay with the Bermudan rig, while the
gaff is favoured by a few diehards and is used, of course, for character
boats and replicas.
The gaff rig does
feature a lower centre of effort for a given sail area and so develops
less heeling moment. This is partly offset by the heavier weight of the
spars, but the weight of the gaff comes down as the sail is reefed.
Furthermore, a quick "reef" can be achieved in a squall by dropping the
peak halyard to scandalize the sail and immediately reduce the effective
mainsail area by 30 to 40 percent. The gaff sail itself is slightly more
effective off wind than the Bermudan as it presents a flatter area to
the breeze and, in addition, the gaff can be fitted with a vang to
reduce twist. More important to the serious cruising sailor is that the
gaff rig is simpler and cheaper to set up, less sensitive to bad tuning,
and generally simpler to repair if something goes wrong at sea.
The gaff rig hasn't had
the advantage of the development that has gone into the Bermudan rig in
the past 50 years. The British designer, J. Laurent Giles, showed the
gaff rig the way over a half-century ago with the lovely 47-foot gaff
cutter Dyarchy. Her single-spreader rig supported a tall, wooden, pole
mast with an unusually large main topsail's luff rope sliding up into a
groove. Despite Dyarchy's success, this did not stir interest in further
development unfortunately, so the gaff rig of today is little changed
from that of a century ago with the exception of synthetic sails and,
possibly, aluminium tube spars.
The contemporary, highly developed
Bermudan rig, with its lighter spars, higher-aspect-ratio sail, inboard
chainplates, close jib-sheeting angles, and so on, has much the better
windward ability. Also the development of the spinnaker and (more
importantly to the cruising sailor, the asymmetrical spinnaker) has more
than offset the gaff rig's advantage downwind. A major feature of the
Bermudan rig, of course, is that a permanent backstay can be fitted,
adding to safety and reducing the need for running backstays.
For these and other
reasons, such as rating handicaps and manufacturing economy, the
Bermudan rig is vastly in the majority today for cruising and racing,
while new gaff-rigged craft are few and far between. Still, the gaff rig
finds favour with those who love traditional craft and replicas of the
working sail of yesteryear. I've been fortunate to have been
commissioned to design a wide range of gaff-rigged yachts, from 25-foot
catboats and Bahama sloops to 70-foot schooners, and I know that our
waters would be very dull indeed if the gaff rig ever vanished
completely.
42-foot double-headsail sloop
Efficiency
In the 1960s, the Royal Ocean Racing Club of Great Britain developed a
handicap rule that estimated the efficiency of the various rigs:
|
Rig
|
Handicap (%)
|
|
Bermudan sloop or
cutter
Bermudan yawl
Bermudan schooner and gaff sloop
Bermudan ketch and gaff yawl
Gaff schooner
Gaff ketch |
100
96
92
88
85
81 |
In effect, the rule said
that a gaff ketch rig has only 81 percent of the efficiency of a
Bermudan sloop or cutter of the same sail area, but that was with other
things being equal. That's not always the case, and it is obvious that a
gaff ketch with a well-designed hull and a slick bottom can sail circles
around a poorly designed Bermudan sloop with ratty sails and a rough
bottom. Also, the cruising sailor must consider that efficiency is not
necessarily handiness or safety.
Safety in cruising is having sufficient windward ability to claw off a
lee shore in a gale, but only if the rig can be handled by a
short-handed crew. If a sloop's sails are too large for the crew to
change or reef under storm conditions, then you have no safety and would
be better off with a divided rig with its smaller sails and greater ease
of handling.
Rigs
Until the 1980s, the cat rig was limited to small character boats,
usually gaff-rigged, and designed along the lines of the Cape Cod model.
Now we have beamy fin keel/spade rudder Nonsuch catboats in sizes to 36
feet, spreading over 700 square feet in one huge sail. I know from
racing against them that these new catboats sail well to windward,
certainly much better than the old gaff-rigged cats, but how much of
that is due to the rig and how much to the modern hull design is open to
question.
Cat rigs
The cat rig is certainly suitable for coastal cruising, with an eye
on the weather, but I don't consider any single-masted cat rig, not even
the most modern, to be a true bluewater cruiser. Someone will cross an
ocean on one, probably has already; oceans have been crossed in all
manner of small craft, from rowboats to sailing canoes . . . just not
with me aboard!
37-foot triple-headsail sloop |
29-foot sloop
|
Sloops and cutters
The sloop rig and the cutter are almost indistinguishable today. If the
boat sets only a single headsail, she is a sloop, of course. With or
without a bowsprit, if the mast is set well aft, abaft 40 percent of the
waterline length, and the boat carries two or more headsails, she is a
cutter. Confusion arises when a boat has her mast located forward but
sets several headsails. Many will call her a cutter but she is, in
reality, a double-headsail sloop. Even with a short bowsprit she'll be a
sloop unless the foretriangle is larger than the mainsail.
The sloop and cutter are
the most efficient of all rigs. Indeed, a sloop with a self-tending jib
would be as easy to handle as a catboat and a better all-round
performer. The single-headsail sloop usually has a slight edge over the
double-headsail rigs, as the staysail is not an easy sail to trim for
maximum performance. Properly set up, either rig is simple to handle,
and with modern (and very expensive) gear they are suited to cruising
yachts up to 50 feet or more.
46-foot cutter without a bowsprit |
38-foot cutter |
An important point with
cutters and most double-headsail rigs is that running backstays are
required to properly tension the staysail stay. Often, you'll find an
intermediate shroud fitted, running from the point where the staysail
stay intersects the mast to a chainplate just abaft the aft lower
shroud. The angle this shroud presents with the mast is far too small to
tension the staysail stay, so all it really does is add undesirable mast
compression. On many designs I have fitted a heavy tackle to the lower
end of the intermediate shroud so it can be left set up as an
intermediate in light air and, when it breezes up, brought aft as a
runner, properly tensioning the staysail stay and reducing mast panting
at the same time. Don't cross an ocean without one!
It should be noted that
the most efficient setup for a given sail area is a sloop with a large
mainsail and a non-overlapping jib. The big 150-percent masthead genoa
jib beloved of modern racers only pays off under handicap rules that do
not penalize the extra area of the overlap. In class racing where every
square foot of sail area is counted, such as the 5.5-Meter class, the
rigs quickly settle down to using the largest permissible main and the
smallest jib to make up the allowed area. Such a rig can make good sense
for the coastal cruiser also, as it simplifies handling. The main can be
quickly reefed when it blows, eliminating the need for a headsail
change. Tacking with the smaller jib is much easier on a husband/wife
crew than handling a whopping big genoa. Such rigs were once common but
are now out of style in this era of masthead sloops.
52-foot yawl |
44-foot ketch with a small mizzen |
Yawls
Despite the efficiency of the single-masted rigs, my own preference for
bluewater cruisers over 40 feet is a divided rig, the yawl or ketch. A
true yawl has the mizzen set abaft the rudderpost and the sail area
about 10 to 15 percent of the total. It's a useful rig wit
h some of the advantages
of both the sloop and ketch. It is almost as weatherly as a sloop and,
like the ketch, can set an easily handled mizzen staysail to increase
area in light air or jog along under jib and mizzen in a blow. At
anchor, if you leave the mizzen set with a reef or two, the boat points
quietly into the wind and no longer sails around its mooring. The yawl's
mizzen must be strongly stayed so the sail can be set to balance the jib
in heavy weather and, in a real gale, to keep the yacht head-to-wind
with a sea anchor off the bow. It's difficult to design a yawl today,
though, as the rudders on contemporary yachts are usually so far aft
that you'd have to tow the mizzen in a dinghy for it to be abaft the
rudderpost.
Ketches
Double-headsail ketch with a bowsprit
The ketch has her mizzen
forward of the rudderpost, and the sail area is comparatively larger
than that of the yawl's mizzen, up to 20 percent or more of the total.
As a result, the ketch is slower and not as weatherly as the yawl
because the large mizzen is partially back winded by the main when
beating to windward. The answer is to design ketch rigs with a smaller
mizzen, closer to yawl proportions. This makes a good compromise rig
with some of the advantages of both. The mizzen mast can be well stayed,
and the mizzen sail is not so large that it unduly affects performance.
Both the ketch and yawl
can be balanced under a wide variety of reduced sail combinations in a
blow and, to many cruising skippers, this handiness more than offsets
the loss of a fraction of a knot to windward. Both rigs can be built in
smaller sizes, of course. I've owned a 22-foot ketch and 22-foot,
25-foot, and 30-foot yawls. Still, it is generally considered that over
40 feet is the proper size for the rigs, although I would not dismiss
them in smaller sizes for extended bluewater cruising. The versatility
and handiness of yawls and ketches can more than make up for an extra
day or two at sea on a long voyage.
By the way, there is no
such rig as a "cutter-ketch" but I've heard a Whitby 42 called that when
one is fitted with a bowsprit and double headsails. The term makes about
as much sense as calling a Maine Friendship a "cutter-sloop." The
correct term is simply a ketch or, if you wish to be exact, a
double-headsail ketch.
Schooners
The schooner rig is rarely seen today and, to my knowledge, there have
been only two schooners in production in North America, the beautiful
Cherubini 44 and my own little 32-foot Lazyjack (see January 2001 issue
of Good Old Boat). The usual schooner is set up with one or more
headsails, followed by a gaff foresail set on the foremast and either a
gaff or Bermudan mainsail on the mainmast. The staysail schooner
replaces the foresail with a staysail between the masts. Nina, a famous
old staysail schooner, was winning silver from her first trans-Atlantic
race in 1928 to her last Bermuda win in the late 1960s.
70-foot gaff topsail schooner
A few schooners have
been built with Bermudan sails on both masts. My Ingenue design was a
CCA rule-beater of this type, winning a lot of silver in her day and
beating many larger yachts boat-for-boat when the wind was free. Still,
although the schooner is fast off the wind, she is not as weatherly as
the sloop or yawl. A schooner can be a handy rig for cruising, though. A
well-designed schooner can beat slowly to windward in a blow with only
her foresail set and is well suited to handling in adverse weather by a
short-handed cruising crew. Schooners have been built as small as 20 to
22 feet, and Murray Peterson designed many traditional beauties in the
30-foot range. The rig is best suited to larger craft, generally of 40
feet or more, but if you like the rig and want a small schooner, go for
it.
When I started in this
business more than 40 years ago, the waters were dotted with schooners,
ketches, yawls, cutters, and sloops of all types, sizes, and colours.
Today, unfortunately, rating rules and the economics of modern mass
production have decreed that the sloop rig is the way to go. Over the
years, the factories have turned them out by the thousands, usually with
blue trim or, like the bathtub in my home, all white with no trim at
all. As sailors, we have lost much of our heritage, and our waters are a
great deal less interesting as a result.
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